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Monday, January 30, 2012

Brand-New Podcast!

It’s rather fitting that, after my recent batch of Sherlock reviews, I participated in a podcast where the topic was Sherlock Holmes. Bill Lengeman over at Traditional Mysteries had a great idea, gathering up mystery bloggers from far and wide to participate in a round-table discussion. The participants in this podcast are:

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Bill Lengeman – The head honcho at his blog, Traditional Mysteries, Bill specializes in brief reviews of mystery novels of a more “traditional” flavour, ranging from the heavy weights like Rex Stout to little-heard of books such as the recently-reviewed Murder in Pastiche.

John Norris – If you like your crime fiction with plenty of “weirdness” to it, look no further than John’s blog, Pretty Sinister Books! John’s blog is very informative and makes for great reading. As a fan of John Dickson Carr, I particularly enjoy reading John’s reviews of crime fiction with supernatural tinges to it.

Les Blatt – Les has had some experience in the realm of podcasts, regularly producing one at Classic Mysteries. Every week Les takes a look at a different classic mystery “worth reading and re-reading”, and he usually manages to find books that are either currently in print or easily found.

Patrick Ohl – I have no idea why they invited this derivative hack, currently blogging At the Scene of the Crime. When he isn’t reviewing books, he finds clever ways of being lazy, such as reviewing the three newest Sherlock episodes back-to-back and digging out old, half-finished, unpublished reviews. He didn’t even bother to mention his affiliation with the site!

Sergio Angelini – One of the most literate bloggers around, Sergio manages to write fascinating, enticing reviews at Tipping My Fedora, where he looks not only at books, but also at movies and audio productions. He’s also the current record-holder for most frequent guest blogger on my blog, appearing a grand total of two times and each time getting me to expand my mystery horizons.

Steve Barge – Steve, a.k.a. Puzzledoctor, is In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel and his blog is one I frequently visit. He’s the fellow responsible for starting a craze over Paul Doherty novels, and he’s come to convert half the mystery blogosphere to believing the Gospel According to Doherty.

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These brave souls gathered together to answer the age-old question: have we seen too much of Sherlock Holmes? Will we ever reach a saturation point?

You can listen to/download the podcast by visiting this page of Bill’s blog. I hope you will enjoy this discussion! I had plenty of fun and will definitely join into the fun on future episodes.

The quality of the recording gets better at around the nine minute mark—we had some technical issues.

My point on the Guy Ritchie films may be seen as contradictory. But what I meant to say in my muddle-headed way was that although the films themselves may not convert many to Holmes, they proved that he can still be a profitable name and that’s what’s led to this recent resurgence in Holmes, which has brought several converts over to the stories.

4 comments:

Good God! I said that the inspiration for Holmes was Joseph Boyle when I meant to say Dr. Joseph Bell. I feel like a utter poseur. I'm not very good at extemporaneous speaking -- so embarrassed by all those "ums" and "ers" -- I need a darn script (goes back to my actor days). I'll be better prepared next time with a notebook that I can refer to instead of running around plucking books off my shelves.

I know what you mean about the "ums" and "ers", John! I haven't escaped from that lethal trap! I think I'll do better next time, though; the doorbell in the background (which didn't make it onto the recording) kind of threw me off.

What a marvelous idea this was, involving a panel of bloggers so many of us have come to enjoy reading regularly. Putting voices to the various personalities reveals some special human aspects often lost when merely reading a blogger's written work. I'll enjoy this sort of thing, warts and all, so gentlemen, you need not make any apologies. No doubt each individual blogger is familiar with a different sampling of selections from the expanding volume of Sherlock Holmes pastiches and I am intrigued by the examples cited by both of you, John and Patrick.

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